Eight o'clock in the morning, a month before he becomes President of the United States, and the first thing he thinks of is to set his stubby lil' fingers firing away in pursuit of a petty feud that began almost 30 years ago. This is manic behavior of the worst sort. Or, more precisely, of a worse sort, because I fear we haven't come close yet to seeing what the worst sort of manic behavior out of this guy would be. For example, can you imagine what his reaction will be if some murderous gang of idiots makes a try at one of the properties bearing his name? We could lose a damn hemisphere.

Meanwhile, in another cabin at Camp Runamuck, we see that the staffing of the Department of Agriculture may be handed over to the puppy-mill guy. From Mother Jones:

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Protect the Harvest's zeal to fight regulation of animal farming extends even to "puppy mills"—large facilities that churn out dogs like factory farms churn out pigs. Back in 2010, the year before Protect the Harvest was founded, Lucas vigorously opposed a Missouri ballot measure to "require large-scale dog breeding operations to provide each dog under their care with sufficient food, clean water, housing and space; necessary veterinary care; regular exercise and adequate rest between breeding cycles," and to "prohibit any breeder from having more than 50 breeding dogs for the purpose of selling their puppies as pets." In 2014, Protect the Harvest opposed an Illinois bill banning the retail sale of puppy-mill dogs.

Apparently, our president-elect never has owned a dog. This does not surprise me in the least.

Anyone who's attended any of the president-elect's apparently never-ending series of public circle jer…er…rallies has grown familiar with the shady presence of one Stephen Miller, who served as the warm-up act in many of them. A man of no apparent accomplishments or career, Miller functioned mainly as a means to get the rubes fired up in anticipation of the candidate's extensive strings of sentence-like objects.

Miller is already feared and despised by many — and he is only 30 years old! — but for another set of political players he is something of an answered prayer. He worked with Michele Bachmann and is beloved by Ann Coulter. The best in-depth profile of Miller so far was produced by Julia Ioffe for Politico in June, and it is veritably overflowing with unsettling quotes from the young adviser (such as his declaration at a rally in June that "Everything that is wrong with this country today, the people who are opposed to Donald Trump are responsible for!").

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The story by Ioffe, a gifted reporter who was canned by Tiger Beat On The Potomac for something she'd tweeted about the creepy relationship between Donald and Ivanka (not to worry—Ioffe's hired on at The Atlantic), is chockfull of details about Miller's baroquely dark view of American politics. He's a complete critter of the conservative Id; he evolved in a unique way entirely in a distinct section of the wingnut fever swamp world.

Like the platypus in Australia, Miller is a product of evolution in isolation. From TBOTP:

He wrote about black students' racial "paranoia" and their mistaken understanding of where true racism resides. The problem is not rich, conservative white people, he wrote. It's "Democrats [who] continue to fuel the destructive vision of a powerful, racist white oppressor from which they need to protect black voters in order to keep their lock on that vote." He wrote that "worshipping at the altar of multiculturalism" undermines American culture and ignores the fact "we have shared with the world the cultural value of individualism and liberty, a value rooted in our unique and glorious history of settlers, pioneers and frontiersman [sic]." Although he identified himself as "a practicing Jew," he lamented the "War on Christmas," saying "you'd probably find more Christmas decorations at your local mosque." Maya Angelou, in Miller's mind, was "a leftist" full of "racial paranoia" who shouldn't be allowed to give the opening address at the start of the school year. In a column called "Sorry, Feminists," he wrote that the gender pay gap was actually because of women working fewer hours and choosing lower-paying professions. "Women already have equal rights in this country," he wrote. "Sorry, feminists. Hate to break this good news to you." ("It's not chauvinism," he signed off. "It's chivalry.")

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He was Trump without the filter. And now, according to New York, he's going to be in the White House, advising on domestic policy in a seniorly capacity. With him there, and with Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as AG, and with god-alone-knows who as Deputy AG for civil rights, assuming they don't do away with that position entirely, I'm sure that John Roberts's Day of Jubilee will continue to bring glory to our nation's founding principles.

Speaking of which, there is a damn good political reason for the electors next Monday to fulfill the function laid out for them by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 68. If the president-elect should be denied the 270 electoral votes necessary for his election to become official, the job of determining things will fall to Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver, and the rest of the House of Representatives. This finally could be the way to force Ryan and the rest of the Republicans to own the entirety of the disaster.

For too long now, people like Ryan have been allowed to tap-dance around Trump's manifest unfitness for office. Hell, Ryan would certify the election of President-Elect Charlie Manson if it got Ryan his tax cuts and voucherized Medicare. He should be forced to demonstrate this in public. It would be a way to make the party own not only the president-elect, but also all the anti-democratic, paranoid forces that Stephen Miller exemplifies, and that the Republican party nurtured so assiduously down through the decades that someone like Donald Trump not only was possible, but inevitable.